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I can confirm boosting sensor strength greatly reduces the chance of being jammed by NPCs, despite the all-too common misconception to the contrary. Now if only NPC TD worked like player's TD.

I assume this will mean more scramming NPC's?
It will hardly be more like PvP if they do not follow the first rule of PvP..

I hope you're considering increasing bounties and such to match.
The last thing we need is for PVE to become even more of a pain in the ass than it already is.

QFT

Then you will need to do more than merely alter the AI. NPCs today are immune to scram/warp disruption (yes, rats will warp away from you in belts), ECM and dampening (like the frigs that start targeting me from 150km away) and essentially immune to energy warfare (neuts/NOS). There are even some complex 'boss' NPCs that are immune to all EWAR. Unless CCP's definition of PvP is Red vs. Blue's, I don't see this being close to PvP.

I have a problem with this.

Not that I do not want to see the A.I. get more challenging. But a PVP fit does not work for running missions now. Making the A.I. more challenging will only make PVP fits less viable.

In PVP as soon as the odds are stacked against you you die. If you jump through a gate and there are 10 or more ships waiting for you what chance do you have? PVP fights are also over very quickly so you fit a buffer as you are usually dead before your active tank can repair anything. You Omni tank because other players will switch damage types to hit your weakest resists.

In PVE you are almost always up against large numbers of ships. All NPC's in that site or mission do the same damage types. If you tried to Omni tank you may die as you can not get omni resists high enough to mitigate enough damage without gimping your DPS. PVE fights last much longer so a Buffer tank will not last, you need an active tank to rep damage as it comes in.

To make PVE feel more like PVP by changing the A.I. of the rats, will not work unless all the PVE content is also reworked to make a PVP play style viable for PVE. These are two completely different types of content with completely different play styles used to play them. You can not just blurr these lines without causing massive imbalance in the game.

If I knew the specifics of how the NPC A.I. was done, How it chooses agro, How it is programed to attack. Basically how it all worked, it would be easy for me to adapt my play style to best fit and counter act it. But players do not have this information. We learn thru trial and error what works and what does not. A developer that is involved in making these changes will automatically know how to best counter the new NPC responses. Players will take much more time to adapt.

A dedicated mission runner who looses a multi billion isk ship due to the way missions play out being drastically changed. And having to learn all over again how to best run these missions will get very frustrated. The chances of these players rage quitting will be huge.

Especially after watching every thing they have taken sometimes years to accumulate in game, be blown away by new game mechanics. Some mission runners have put all the isk they have earned for years into dead space mods and fittings on their PVE mission runner ships. Loosing it all in a short amount of time because the developers decided to change the A.I. of the NPC's will not go over well.

What are they going to do. Spend the next several months relearning to play the game. Followed by a couple years of playing to get back the same level of stuff they lost? Make no mistake their are mission runners who spent years building up their very expensive mission running ships.

Seeing many months or even years worth of work vaporized by more intelligent NPC's, will just encourage them to work harder in game to rebuild their wealth? Or will they just quit and move onto another game? The number that will quit will be much higher than the number that will start over.

The changes in Retribution to the NPC AI are affecting all NPC, the ones in null-sec and the ones in high-sec.
CCP Fozzie has recently made changes to moon-goo and knowing him probably won't stop.

The idea of creating missions that encourage players to bring fits that are more in line with PvP does not mean we are forcing those players to PvP because as you said, if they wanted to PvP they would. Anyways, since nothing has been decided for sure yet on what we will do with missions I am not going to say anything else on that.

Yes, the standard solo null sec ratter who uses heavy and light drones, and probably fighters, is doomed as well. That part is true.

But, tell me about the changes to moon goo mining, other than the add of alchemy, which had such an enormous impact on null sec income.
I am fascinated to hear about the changes that have been made to tech moons since the last time I logged on.

As for the changes to the AI affecting all NPC's, including null sec, I guess exempting plex structures from the AI because it made the null sec plexes too hard, was a complete figment in my imagination, and I did not read about that some 20 pages ago in this thread.

It is very hard for me to be nice and polite in responses to you when you keep treating us like idiots.

Exactly,
PVP is done for fun, for the challenge. PVE is done to make isk. If PVE was changed to the point where the isk made from it took to much effort it would break the game.

It costs a lot of isk to PVP in decent ships. Where does that isk come from? There is a small income from loot drops and will be a small income from bounties if the new bounty system works out well. But this is not and will never be enough to support a PVP career.

Most null sec PVPers use ratting and plexing to raise this much needed isk. It is a fact that even the most avid PVPer has little chance of survival if caught by a small gang while flying their PVE ship. So why do they not rat in a PVP ship? Because a PVP ship is no better suited for PVE than a PVE ship is suited for PVP.

Changing the game to make PVP and PVE similar enough to be able to use the same ship is a nice idea. But this would require a complete reworking of the entire game, not just making the NPC's "smarter". A large group of NPC's will tear apart a PVP ship just as quickly as a gate camp will. Buffer tank just does not work for PVE. Likewise a PVE ship caught by a small gang will not be near capable of handling the incoming DPS with its local tank. It just does not have enough buffer. Changing the NPC A.I. will throw a wrench into the current PVE balance. It will take a very long time to fix the damage this will do. And the game will suffer for that time. Likely even losing a large number of active subscriptions.

Why not the other way around too?
Seems like a pretty one-sided approach to this, largely in favor of PvE security.
Are we moving towards a safer more pink EvE where everyone wins and PvP must only be done in large blobs with the consent of both parties?
If the aim is to make ratting more like PvP, the number of scramming NPC's really should increase.

Allso, any idea how long the "sig-radius AI" is going to be around for?
Are we talking weeks, months or years?

I am asking about the timeframe so I know if I should just wait it out, or if I should join one of the blobs to profit from the newfound safety in 0.0 ratting.